The Last Night at the End of the World
by tepid sponge bath
Summary: Sherlock Holmes, and how he figures on the last night of Irene Adler's life, and what they do then.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer**: The characters of Sherlock are not mine, neither is the story, nor are the characters from the original stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I make no monetary profit from this

**Note**: Written for this fill on the Sherlock kink meme, but it sort of got a mind of its own and started wondering off in a different direction so it doesn't seem to be a specific fill any longer: _So it's pretty much canon that Shelock is a virgin... And Scandal was just lovely all over. So please, please, please, can we have Irene taking Sherlock's virginity? I don't care how, I don't care why, I just NEED wonderful, toppy Irene punching the HELL out of Sherlock's v-card. You know she'd take such good care of him. Smack him around a bit, then tie him up and go to town until he was a whimpering mess. Maybe a bit of a cuddle afterwards if he was a good boy ;)_

(Why, yes, I do burn ships, sometimes including my own.)

**The Last Night at the End of the World**

"You should leave here in the morning."

_Here_ was a small house in Orangi Town, Karachi - easily the largest slum district in Pakistan, probably the largest in the world. They had, however inconceivable the idea had been a few hours ago, escaped the execution squad: something had exploded just as Sherlock Holmes had swung his blade away from Irene Adler (_"The timing was off," he told her later. "They weren't supposed to find out that I'd replaced one of them, but I couldn't stall them any longer, especially after the text tone . Lucky thing, shrapnel."_) and they had _run_, a harum-scarum, tumbling flight to the nearest village and from there, they'd ridden to the city in the back of a goat truck.

Sherlock had explained, softly, barely audible over the goat noises and the rumbling of the old diesel engine, that there had been a military raid that night, and that they would find the charred, beheaded body of a woman in the wreckage. He'd also said that enough of the terrorists would survive and escape to report to their superiors that Irene Adler had been killed, said that there was a minor glitch in that he had _had _to cut one of them down, but _he_ wasn't going to survive, and the raid had happened soon enough that the men - grunt workers of middling to low intellect, all of them, except for one who had waited in the jeep - wouldn't have noticed or wouldn't remember more than a sword being swung, so it was all fine.

"Getting rid of me so soon?" she said, unwrapping the scarf from her head and shaking her hair loose. She had thanked him in the goat truck, bringing her lips close to his ear to be heard, and she had meant it. She was alive and in one piece, which was much more than she'd expected to be, and she liked that, even if she had mixed feelings as to how exactly that had come about.

"Not soon enough. I'd rather you left tonight, but you're in no condition to travel any more. Tired and _in shock_," he stressed the words when she opened her mouth to protest. "And in an unfamiliar part of a strange city. I doubt you even speak the language fluently. You'd make mistakes."

It was probably true, though her Urdu was moderately passable. Tired and in shock and _desperate_, was what he should have said. She'd been desperate enough to trust Sherlock Holmes, after all she had done to him (_used him ruthlessly_,_and showed him exactly how_, _that was all_) and after what he had done to her (_taken her whole world apart and left her to the wolves, only that_), and that was probably enough of a litmus test of her ability to make good decisions tonight.

"Go to the port," he continued. "There are smugglers who'll take you on board, no questions asked, if you have the money. I suggest you pass yourself off as a man, easier to move around that way in this part of the world. Don't skimp on it. Cut your hair. Bind your breasts. Can't do anything about the foreign, though, no time for that: you'll still be memorable, but at least not as a woman."

"I'm no stranger to male costume," she said sharply, piqued that he was telling her how to go about it. "What about you? It doesn't sound like you're coming with me."

"I'm not. I'll be heading to Mumbai with an illegal shipment of Banarasi silk." Sherlock turned to face Irene where she sat on the bed, his features carefully blank. Almost too carefully, she could tell. "This is the end, Miss Adler. You're dead. I've taken precautions enough to fool anyone who looks into it. And unless you're very, very stupid, you will stay that way."


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer**: The characters of Sherlock are not mine, nor is the story, nor are the characters from the original stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I make no monetary profit from this

**The Last Night at the End of the World**

"A new life for old," said Irene, as she started to undo the buttons on her cuffs. She wondered, somewhat distantly, if he would get the reference to the fairy tale (surely someone had read even Sherlock Holmes fairy tales at some point in his life).

"Something like that." He drew a breath, gestured to the duffle bag perched on a plastic set of drawers in the corner of the room. It looked like he'd been living out of it for a couple of days. "I have clothes that should fit you. And soap. You'll be wanting to get rid of the smell of goat. The bathroom's through there."

"I won't ask why you did it." Irene raised her voice just a little as Sherlock turned to leave, and he stopped, looked over his shoulder, and she could see his lips starting to shape a sharp, sardonic 'Good'. "But I would like to know," she went on before he could actually say it, "how you explain a well-dressed Caucasian foreigner living in the Pakistani slums."

"Poverty tourism." He pointed at the camera, a large, professional-looking Nikon, peeking out (_she should have seen it_) from behind the duffle. "The most thorough kind. I might sell the pictures to National Geographic, what do you think?"

"Under an assumed name, of course. Are they any good?"

"Would I have thought of selling if they weren't?"

She shrugged. "And I won't ask how you set this up."

"You _are_ asking. There's a local arms dealer who owes me a favor. This is his place, or at least he owns it. He doesn't know about you."

That almost made Irene laugh. She'd heard that so many times in her line of work - _"It's all right, he doesn't know about you,"_ _"Er, she doesn't know about you, could we keep this, you know, under the radar, please?"_ - that the irony of Sherlock saying it now couldn't escape her, though perhaps it oughtn't have amused her as much as it did. It was probably nerves and fatigue. "Does John know?"

The set of Sherlock's shoulders was suddenly stiff, uncomfortable as he faced her. "No."

"Oh, so this is _serious_." Irene stood, the scarf flowing off of her lap and onto the floor. It only took her a few steps to stand just inside his personal space. He wrinkled his nose at her, but she ignored that. They _both_ smelled of goat.

"Very." He breathed the word, lowered his eyes, and because he was who he was, that could have meant anything.

"I suppose I won't see you again after this." If she had been someone else, someone more sentimental, the words would have caught in her throat. But she wasn't, and they didn't (a bald statement of fact wrapped in a smooth purr, that's what they were), and she laid a hand against his chest (shirt black and practical, dirt-stained, sweat-damp). There was a heart beating underneath there, who would have thought?

"Why would you want to?" And his tone, cutting and genuinely baffled all at once, put an end to the banter, the flirting. He took her wrist, pulled her hand away, gently. "I saved you because you are unique, the only one of your kind, and to lose you would be a senseless waste. Please don't presume too much."

Irene shook herself loose of him, let her arm fall to her side. "You said you had soap?"

There was soap, and little packets of shampoo, and running water, even if the bathroom was little more than a tiny tiled room with a tap sticking out of the wall at knee level and a ceramic toilet bowl without a water tank in one corner. No shower head either, but there was a small bucket and a plastic dipper, and those worked. Irene soaped herself off, scrubbing hard with a washcloth to get rid of the goat smell and the desert grit, and after she'd rinsed, she did it again, scrubbing even harder to get the smells of fear and relief - she didn't know which was worse - out from under her skin. She also washed her hair twice - a sort of farewell gesture more than anything else, since she was going to cut it off before she left.

When she was done, she stood for a long time under the single, naked light bulb, cold water dripping down her body and from her hair (_goodbye_), holding one hand to her mouth and the other stiffly at her side. She blinked hard, five times, swallowed once, and did not cry.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer**: The characters of Sherlock are not mine, nor is the story, nor are the characters from the original stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I make no monetary profit from this, and I apologize profusely for throwing logic out of the window.

**Note**: I've left this (and other things) lie for quite a long time, and I'm sorry. I should probably put up a notice saying I ATE'NT DEAD because I do intend to get back to everything. Eventually. Just give me time.

**The Last Night at the End of the World**

**Part Three**

Irene turned the situation over in her head, counting facts and weighing options, as she sat on the bed, listening to the splashing of Sherlock doing his own washing up in the next room. It wouldn't be the first time she had faked death, and not even the first time that she'd be leaving an identity behind, but she'd never done it so thoroughly before. Nor had she ever had this much outside help, and unsolicited at that. Her fingers trailed down to the unbuttoned cuffs of the shirt she wore at the thought – Sherlock's of course, it wasn't as if they'd let her bring a change of clothes to her execution. The thing was a few sizes too big, and, though he hadn't worn it yet on this trip, it smelled like something he owned, of aftershave and his soap and his scent and a faint chemical whiff she associated with 221B Baker Street underneath the hint of fabric softener, and it made her slightly uncomfortable.

She plucked at the button on the sleeve. It had been a very long time since she'd had this little, when she hadn't even been able to call the clothes on her back her own, and, upon reflection, it was probably the reminder that made the silk sit uneasily against her skin. She needn't have worn the thing, that was true, she could have stayed in her own skin still morning, but…

But nothing. A lot had changed over the past few months. Her own skin wasn't quite as comfortable as it had once been, and that was the simple truth of it.

She gathered her hair in one hand, pulled it over her shoulder, baring the back of her neck, leaving damp patches on the back of the shirt and creating new ones down its front. Irene Adler, insecure. Some people would find that confession even more satisfying than news of her death.

Sherlock nodded at her when he came back into the room, the bend of his neck the barest acknowledgement of her presence before he started to rummage about in his bag. He had a towel wrapped around his waist, and it amused her to see the elastic waistband of the underpants he was wearing beneath that. Irene watched as he took out a pair of trousers, and continued to root around, possibly for another shirt. His movements were stiff and self-conscious; she could see that it was all he could do to keep himself from looking over his shoulder.

"You were talkative enough back in the truck," she said, folding her legs into a more comfortable position.

He had to look then. "Well, we aren't in the truck."

"What are you afraid of? I don't bite." And she had to smile around the lie. "Well. I do, but I don't have to."

Sherlock spun around, a hand going to his towel to keep it from slipping downward and off. "Who said I was afraid?"

"You walked into Buckingham Palace wearing nothing but a sheet, and now you can't get dressed quickly enough."

"I was trying to make a point."

"If you say so."

He nodded again (_I _do _say so_), took his clothes, carelessly bundled, and made to leave. There was another room on this floor, smaller and unfurnished and closer to the narrow stairs, and she supposed he was headed there. Or downstairs, to the little kitchen and the area of generic use. Anywhere to be away.

"Would you believe me if I told you my key code was just a pun?" she asked.

That stopped him. "No," he said crisply.

"You vain, vain man." Irene got up, and her hair swung loose about her shoulders. "You got it right, but your reasoning was flawed."

"I got the desired result."

"But you were still wrong. Irks you, doesn't it?" There was a dresser of sorts, with a mirror, next to the chest of drawers. She went to that, her fingers playing on the lonely bottles of shaving cream and deodorant.

"I really don't think so."

"No?" She was closer to him now, one hand on the drawers. He took a step backward, his grip on his clothes tightened, and he raised them slightly in an unconscious act of self-defense.

"I don't play the sort of games you play, Miss Adler." Sherlock's voice rose, and how he kept it just short of a snarl was a mystery to her, a great study in self-control. "And I _don't_ intend to start."

"That's where you go wrong." Irene squared her shoulders. "You forget what I did for a living. I know as well as you do that desire is just chemicals. But I suppose it didn't occur to you that it can be faked."

It was Sherlock's turn to straighten up. He didn't speak – indeed, he kept his mouth in a firm, closed line – but the little twitch of his lips told Irene all she needed to know.

"Oh dear, did I disappoint you? I knew you were vain, but where _I_ went wrong, Mister Holmes, was underestimating exactly how vain you are. I was just having a little fun with words, and I thought I'd have a little fun on the side – can you blame a girl? – but, really, I didn't count on your towering pride and vanity.

"I couldn't tell what you liked. Not then, anyway, and it made you infinitely more interesting. Though I knew it would take more than a few words, and a touch here and there. It was a nice challenge, and I thought I'd won, and I never dreamed you'd turn it against me like that. I didn't lie when I said I was just playing the game, but you – you really don't play it, do you? You can't play it worth a damn, and you think the world of yourself." _That's how you figured it out, wasn't it, Mister Holmes, it wasn't your deductions or your cleverness. _

"Is that why it hurt?" _Is that why you're here? _went unasked. She grabbed his wrist, looked down to see his knuckles whiten against his crumpled shirt (_gray, usually worn around the flat at a guess_), and looked up at his face. He wasn't resisting her, but he tensed as if he was preparing to. She saw that he hadn't shaved today, saw that water was still dripping from his dark hair onto his shoulders, and she had to bite back a laugh when she saw his eyes. "What was it you said? Pulse elevated, and pupils dilated. Oh yes, the chemistry is simple enough."

Sherlock was going to protest, she could tell – John Watson was right, he really did need to have the last word _all the time_ - but she went up and forward, and kissed him quite firmly before he could get a word in.


	4. Chapter 4

**Part Four**

He dropped the shirt.

She had the measure of him then, or she thought she did. For a few seconds that were all his lips underneath hers, she thought that he was, when it came to it, like any other man beneath the skin. And then he drew back and away, sharply, but without touching her, as if that would somehow be dangerous. Irene laughed, mostly at herself.

"You've never even been kissed properly, have you?" she said.

Sherlock licked his lips. If his hands hadn't been busy holding up the towel, Irene guessed that he would have wiped his mouth too. "That's none of your business," he said, a little too fast.

"Actually, it is," said Irene archly. "Or it _was_. I suppose I should start looking into a new profession."

"Yes, you should." Still too fast. And now that he was sure his towel was secure around his waist again, he did touch his mouth, the side of a curled forefinger resting against that perfect Cupid's bow. "You should also consider less misbehaving."

"I don't think I could give that up." She smiled thinly at her little joke.

"Try anyway. You might live longer." Sherlock bent to retrieve his clothes, and Irene watched, taking in the curve of his spine and the way the towel stretched, just so. She remembered the photos she'd been sent of him on his way to the Palace, and wondered if, at any point, that sheet of his had slipped off (_that would have been a sight_), or if he had kept as tight a hold on it as he was keeping on himself now.

"Oh, around you, certainly. I learned that lesson the hard way, don't you think?"

"Then let it stay learnt." And that _was_ a snarl, lips curled over bared teeth.

"And that's what you want?" Irene crossed her arms beneath her breasts in a whisper of silk and skin. "I'm only asking because-"

"Because someone else in my position would have taken advantage of your weakness and your gratitude, pretended or otherwise, given the opportunity. And you-"

"I would have been suitably grateful." She gave a little shrug. _Did you expect anything else? _It was only the truth after all. She would have been meek, if that was what he'd liked, beaten down by everything she'd been through and ready to cry in his arms like a little girl. Or she could have thrown herself at him in a sort of impassioned frenzy, wild with joy and relief at still being alive. Neither would have been hard, and neither- though she would never say it where there were ears to hear - would have been much of an act on her part. "I'll admit, that little kiss was clumsy of me. Maybe you're right. I am tired. I thought-"

"You thought I'd fall for it. That you could buy me off that way. That _I _would play the part of an eager lover, glad of the slightest excuse that would get you in my bed. Miss Adler, you are very-"

"Wrong. I know. More fool me for trying to keep my hand in a game that I shouldn't be playing anymore. But, you know, it's precious really, the way you're keeping yourself in check."

Raised eyebrows, and a look that shot disdain straight through Irene, and possibly into the upper rooms of the other little house next door. _Oh?_

Irene shifted her shoulders, her bare feet into a more comfortable stance. "You think you're a study in self-control. And I imagine you've convinced most of the people you know to think the same."

And it was Sherlock's turn to crowd into her space, using his height and his greater bulk and his eyes in a show of intimidation, and damn her if it wasn't effective. "And you know better?"


End file.
